1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method of describing periodic pattern repetitiveness of an image, and more particularly, to a method for exactly describing a periodic pattern by effectively denoising of an image.
2. Description of the Related Art
To distinguish an image from another image in image data, it is regarded as important to give attention to or perceive a coherent pattern. This is regarded to be very important for purposes such as storing, sorting, and retrieval of image for image recognition and image manipulation. Also, this is a decisive element to obtain a better performance of pattern perception in a specific field of pattern matching using texture features.
In U.S. Pat. No. 09/272,321 filed on Mar. 19, 1999 by the present applicant and incorporated herein by reference, a method for vertically or horizontally projecting raw pixel values is provided. The method for vertically or horizontally projecting raw pixels is described as an effective method for extracting a peculiar pattern within image data. According to the method, if a repetitive pattern is included in an image, the pattern is definitely indicated within the projected image. Also, in the above-identified patent, it is disclosed that an auto-correlation method is applied to the resultant projected image, and periodic characteristics can be identified or magnified. However, pattern repetitiveness found within the projected image does not have a fine period in general due to a combination of other repetitive patterns and noise. Particularly, because noise within an image tends to make the pattern ambiguous, it is necessary to remove noise.
A conventional method for reducing noise using an automatized periodic pattern counting mechanism can partially solve the problem. However, if the noise is removed, there is a problem in that the pattern repetitiveness of the image is changed.